An Iraqi mother comforts her child in a pediatric oncology ward in Baghdad. Her child suffered from a cancer previously unseen in children.

Iraq is currently too chaotic for meaningful research to be carried out on why and how this child -- and many, many others - suffered from such a cancer.
When I spoke to them, Iraqi doctors were careful to state that they were not speaking from the point of view of having any real data BUT, in their opinions, research, when conducted, should take into account the huge amounts of toxic waste spread over their country since wars --Iran-Iraq, Gulf, and Operation Iraq Freedom -- engulfed their country. Perhaps the answers lie in the fallout from toxic materials from the Gulf War's burning oil wells, the chemicals used to dampen dust around military bases, the toxic biologicals released into the atmosphere when U.S. troops smashed through Saddam's hasty fortificatations and biological weapons storage caches, the massive amounts of air borne Depleted Uranium that have accumulated from U.S. arsenals used in the Gulf War as well as in Operation Iraqi Freedom and the occupation that has followed it?
Throughout the 1990s sanctions were imposed on Iraq and ordinary Iraqis as a way of sqeezing Saddam. These sanctions excluded the importation of certain medical supplies on suspicion that they'd be diverted to the manufacture of WMD. Sanctions also debilitated the entire Iraqi health system, once the best in the Middle East.
This child's family sold their possessions to buy chemotherapy on the black market. Despite this, their child died.